The Pauline Epistles
The Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul stressed that faith in Jesus, the Messiah who died for sins, should not be limited to Jews.
Salvation through Christ is available to everyone, both Jews and Gentiles.
Paul considered himself the Apostle to the Gentiles, delivering the good news of salvation through faith in Christ to non-Jews.
The Spread of Christianity
The precise routes of Paul’s journeys are uncertain.
Paul supported himself as a tent maker.
He was crucial in spreading Christianity, establishing communities of believers in cities previously unfamiliar with Christianity.
By the second century, Christianity consisted of a network of congregations, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Pauline Epistles
Thirteen letters in the New Testament are attributed to Paul, but some were likely written by members of his churches.
The seven undisputed Pauline Epistles are: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Paul urges Christians to use their spiritual gifts with love; otherwise, they are useless.
Key verses:
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”
“If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
“If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Love's enduring nature:
“Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.”
“For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”
Reflection on maturity: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”
Current and future understanding: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
The greatest virtue: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
Romans
Paul’s letter to the Christian congregation in Rome has been highly influential in Christian thought.
Tradition says that the apostle Peter established the church in Rome fifteen years before Paul’s epistle and became its first bishop.
Paul's letter to the Romans, the earliest record of the Christian community in the empire’s capital, greets twenty-eight different people by name but says nothing about Peter.
Justification by Faith
Paul insists that a person is put in a right relationship with God through faith in God’s act of salvation, not by following Biblical Law.
“Everyone has sinned,” and “the wages of sin is death.”
Jesus died to pay the penalty for others, so anyone who has faith is restored to a right standing before God. This is Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.
The Epistle of James - A Response to Paul
Some Christians misinterpreted Paul’s doctrine, believing that only belief mattered, not how one lived.
James opposes this, stating, “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” and “faith without works is dead.”
This disagreement led to a later schism within Catholicism, resulting in the emergence of Protestantism.
Catholics generally follow James’ justification by works, while Protestants follow Paul’s justification by faith.
Baptism
Christians practiced baptism, with converts introduced to the church through a ritual immersion in water with sacred words.
For Paul, baptism meant experiencing union with Christ and participating in his victory over death.
Paul and the Historical Jesus
Jesus and Paul agreed that strict adherence to the laws of the Torah would not contribute to a person’s salvation.
They differed on what would make a difference; Jesus emphasized repentance, loving God, and loving neighbors, while Paul emphasized faith in God’s deliverance.
Early Equality for Women
Women had a prominent role in Paul’s churches, serving as evangelists, pastors, teachers, and prophets.
Some wealthy women provided financial support, and others served as patrons, allowing congregations to meet in their homes and providing resources.
The prominence of women in Jesus’ ministry likely positively impacted the status of women in the church after his crucifixion.
The Later Submission of Women
Paul anticipated a new social order: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).
However, this equality was not yet a social reality.
After Paul’s death, women were denied positions of status and authority.
By the end of the first century, Christian women were subordinated to male authority. 1 Timothy 4:7 instructs bishops to silence women in churches and stop them from teaching.
Women were eventually to submit to men not only in the church but also at home to their husbands.
The Epistle to the Hebrews
Some scholars attributed Hebrews to Paul, but most believe the author is later and anonymous.
Hebrews asserts Christian identity and claims Christianity is superior to Judaism.
The author offers no hope for Jews who have fallen away from belief in Jesus as the messiah.
Hebrews states that willfully persisting in sin after receiving the truth leads to judgment and fury of fire. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:26-29).
The author feared Christians would renounce Christ, as the expected Day of Judgment had not arrived.
2 Peter
Like Jesus, Paul expected to be alive when Jesus returned.
The anonymous author of 2 Peter explains the delay of the end of the world.
Time is measured in human terms, but for God, “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”
The end was delayed to allow people time to repent, but the day of judgment is still destined to come and will appear “like a thief in the night.”